


Vows Made In Storms

by tb_ll57



Series: In The Quiet Heart Is Hidden [6]
Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon Het Relationship, Complicated Relationships, Destiny kind of blows, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Gap Filler, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:06:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She wants to roll over and sleep for a year-- no.  She wants to get on Moonlight and ride for a new horizon, just wind in her hair, the vast open sky above her, and no-one yelling at her for reasons she doesn't fathom.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vows Made In Storms

_Lift your head, look over there,_  
_Give me your dear white hand;_  
_Because in your lovely breast_  
_Is the key to the lock of my heart!_

Bugeilio'r Gwenith Gwyn  
Welsh Folk Song

 

_Gold gleams against the dark.  Copper hair, as bright as the torch in a pale hand bobbing as it descends the low-ceiling stairwell.  In the other hand is a magician's rod, with its own brilliant lustre, jewels winking.  Together they rise, the rod and the flame, and the flame flares violet with magic and throws the marble tomb into sharp relief.  He stands framed against it, the sorcerer and the tomb, and then he speaks a word of Power._

Alanna blinks, and wakes.

The sun is painfully bright on the glass of the window.  The shutters are thrown back and she can see the sky, a sweet clear blue rippled with tufts of soft cottony cloud.  The snow-covered mountain is like fine white paint brushed on canvas, perfectly clear-edged.

Mountain.  Chitral.  The storm is gone as if it had never been.

She lays in a bed in what must be the same inn, but not the room in which she'd been before.  The bed is bigger, for one, the rag-stuffed mattress solid beneath her and a fragile old quilt of beautifully stitched red roses draped over her.  A merry fire burns in a large hearth, but the chair beside it matches the ones in the common room.  A carved cedar chest stands in the corner, and candles of real wax, not tallow, rest in pewter holders awaiting the night.  Things too fine for passing-throughs, but fine enough for the owners of a large and prosperous waystation.  Why have--

It's no mystery.  She knows as soon as she tries to sit up why she's been moved from her small rented room.  Her hands throb horribly, and she's too startled to muffle her cry when the weight of her upright push ignites explosions of pain right up the bones of her arms to jar her shoulders.  She falls back, head swimming, to the pillows.  When she blinks again, salty tears flood her eyes, and she sniffles, too weak to even detest her weakness.  She stares at her hands through the blur.  Heavily bandgaged, and what she can see of her fingers are red and swollen, her nails crusted with black.  Frostbite, she realises, numb.  She lets them drop to her lap, and stares at the ceiling til the dark spots over her vision settle and she can breathe without feeling she'll faint.  She can't check the tears, and smears them on her sleeve carefully, but they fall relentlessly.

'Don't do that.'  Warmth encloses her wrists.  Liam.  He's a ginger smudge til his thumbs caress her cheeks, clearing the wet from her clumped eyelashes with great care.  The door stands open behind him, and Buri is there, a wide grin on her round face for a moment before she vanishes, and there are voices in the hall, but Liam goes to shut the door, and then they're alone, and she's crying again.

'I had to,' she says, her voice a crushed croak in a throat that's almost too sore to speak at all, and Liam pretends not to hear her, for one horrible minute, and then he coughs and stares at the window, and that's even worse.

'You should sleep,' he tells her, a long time later, and her eyes are already closed.  His deep sigh echoes the rush of wind in the chimney.  He doesn't say anything else.  She hears the door open and close again, and falls into the darkness behind her eyes with just the thought that she could hate him for that, if she didn't understand perfectly.

 

 

**

 

 

The Jewel sings.

It has a strange trill, like a bird's song bouncing off the mountains through the thin high air.  It captivates her.  In her beltpouch it's muted; in her hand, buffered by the layers of bandging, she can hear it hum.  Laid at her breastbone it seemed to pulsate, beat to a rhythm like her heart.  On her pillow, held to her ear, it sings to her.

It's cut like a jewel, but not like any cut a human would have made.  It's so faceted so as to be nearly round, each flat surface as small as a speck of sand.  It's exquisite workmanship, beyond any tool she can think of.  To stroke it is to marvel at the texture, and she does stroke it, obsessively.  The facets aren't flat-- they're concave, tiny dips by the dozens.  Maybe hundreds, and the Jewel is small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.  The emberstone the Goddess had given her is a totem of considerable magic, but this artefact is a nonpareil.  Thom will love it.  She can hardly wait to show him.  She'll have to pry him off it.

After she decks him.  Coram is the one who remembered.  Thom's been predicting cold in her future since they were old enough to talk.  _Cold_.  Artic, maybe.  Bitter, cutting ice.  She knows intellectually she can't blame him-- even the Ordeal had tried to prepare her, and the Goddess herself-- but the thought of giving Thom a fat lip for never bloody warning her is the only thing sustaining her through the grim effort of rebuilding her shattered strength.

She knows better than to push herself too far, but she pushes right to the edge of her endurance and then just a little bit more each day.  No-one badgers her to stop.  No-one says much of anything to her, right now.  Coram has been stone cold sober for a week, but he lingers in the common room and only sees her for a minute or two when he brings her supper to her room.  Thayet and Buri practise with her sometimes in the courtyard, because Liam won't; she doesn't know where he goes, but she hardly sees him at all now.  She doesn't even know where he's sleeping, but it's not with her, and she's decided to pretend it doesn't hurt and she hasn't noticed.  Faithful is the only one around to tell, even if she did want a confrontation about it.  Her cat is the only one who seems unphased by her ordeal, by the storm, by the Jewel.  He ignores it when they're together at night, but when she's at her exercises in the yard, he stays in her room to guard it for her.  She's seen him sitting on it as if it were an egg.

Word has spread.  The Doi might have been the ones to carry the tale.  As far as Alanna can tell, no-one else has left the inn since the morning the Doi brought her back from Chitral's Pass.  There are new faces all around, noise through all the evening hours, and she's fairly sure the young man with moony eyes and a lute who watches her adoringly whenever she's in view is a bard or something, possibly at work doing something horrifying like writing a ballad about her, but he hasn't approached.  No-one does.  She's in a well of silence all day, all night.  Usually it would bother her, but she feels the silence inside her, too.  Her physical form is bruised and battered, and she wonders, once or twice, if maybe her mind is, as well.  Maybe the others think that, too.  The verse about the warrior broken by the elemental's Jewel will take a tragic turn.  But the idea of being disturbed fails to move her.

She's joked for years there was madness in her family, after all.  For the first time in years, she thinks of her father's strangeness, and his distance, and his grief, without rancour.  It's odd, that; she's won the Dominion Jewel, conquered her greatest ambition, travelled half the known world, and she's barely twenty-two.  Her father died with nothing to his name but forty lonely years.  But it's the first time she's felt any kinship with him.  She puts the thought away as simply as sheathing Lightning at her side.  She can't change any of it, and she's ready for whatever's next, anyway.

 

 

**

 

 

'I don't want any more of that blasted tea,' she complains, pouting like a child, and is tentatively cheered when it actually works.  The tension that's been between her and Liam the past week breaks with an almost audible crack, and Liam laughs, suddenly.

'No-one does,' he admits, and gives up thrusting it under her nose and sets the mug on the tray across her lap instead.  'They don't even like me to make it in the kitchen, it smells that awful.'

'They're not wrong.'  Alanna pushes the tray with her half-eaten breakfast to the mattress and curls toward Liam.  He's sitting down, in the chair by the fire, which means he's going to stay for a minute at least.  Her hope rises, and she tries not to feel it, to just enjoy the moment.  There will be setbacks, of course, she's not unaware of that, but this is the start of things going back to normal, and she longs for normal.

'Suppose you flirt with all the maids,' she says then.  'Flash a little teeth, lean in a little close...'

'Sometimes,' Liam says, his slow grin making crescents of the lines beside his mouth.

Silence falls.  She picks at the edge of the wrapping on her hands.  The Doi left a paste for her palms, nasty-smelling like every other remedy she's ever encountered, but she hasn't applied it yet and she's got the private notion that she ought to skip a day, to see if she can start easing back on that, too.  Her Gift is nearly fully replenished, and by evening she plans to experiment with a little healing.  She touches the emberstone at her throat, and the Jewel in the pouch she's strung alongside it.  It palpitates.

'You're smiling,' Liam murmurs.  'It's good to see you smile.'

'I smile lots.'

'Not really,' he says, and props his chin on his hand, regarding her thoughtfully.  'Not really, you know.  You give it away for others.  Not very often for yourself.'

'I'm not unhappy--'

'Cautious,' he says, and she nods.  That's it exactly.  'So who do I thank for that?' Liam wonders.  'The Conte Duke, I suppose.  The King of Tortall, makin' you that afraid to stay in your own lands?  The Blue-Eyed Prince, for not marrying you?'  He ignores her scowl.  'Suppose it must go further back than that.  Your mystical brother, for sending you off alone to live a lie.'

'I'm the one who made Thom switch,' she points out.  'Though Thom would tell you it's all pre-ordained, anyway.  It was our destiny to be as we are.'  She discovers she's clutching the Jewel as tightly as her bound fingers allow.  'You can't blame anyone for destiny.'

He doesn't say anything, even to dispute her, but it's a storm in his eyes, pale in the morning light.  When he stands, she thinks he'll leave, and she drops her eyes, unwilling to watch him go again.  But his boots thump along the rug not toward the door, to her.  He sits on the edge of the bed, and his hand falls to her knee beneath the old heirloom quilt, his thumb stroking a line to the inside of her thigh.

It doesn't take any more than that.  She's suddenly tense all over, tensest of all in her gut-- lower than her gut, and the pressure is delicate enough to break at just the colour of his eyes, green, green, and delicious enough to savour, for the brief tantalising moment it takes him to lean toward her, brush his lips over her jaw, and then take her lips with his.

Her breakfast plate nearly takes a tumble, til he moves it to the floor, and drops his boots with two solid clunks beside it.  She kicks the quilt aside as he lowers himself onto her, his weight and his warmth wondrous.  He goes down the laces of her shirt in a line, skimming over the tender scar down her sternum to squeeze her breast instead, his hips and the hot bulge of his sex rocking into her.  She roams the broad muscles of his back, the round of his hard buttocks, and he pulls back long enough to watch her as if he could devour her with his eyes alone.  He clenches a fist in her hair, slow enough she could pull away if she wanted to, but she doesn't, and when it starts to tingle and pull at her scalp, he bends and applies his mouth to the hollow of her throat, sucking hard on her skin, and she groans.  He shudders against her.  There's fumbling, their fingers clumsy and knocking into each other as they grapple with their clothes, and the very moment he's free he's in her, gasping into her shoulder and pushing, pushing, pushing.

This bed is big enough for them to lay side by side without touching, after, bodies cooling slowly with the warmth of the fire washing over them.  Liam holds her hand, interlacing their fingertips to the edges of her bandaging.

'What was it like, up there?' he asks, what feels like a long hazy time later, and, still contented and forgetting for a moment that she's not supposed to be happy, she answers him truthfully.

'Everything,' she says.  'I'll never be that good again.  And I'm glad.'

His exhale is short and hard.  'The maids have that dress of yours ironed and hanging in Thayet's room.  Suppose you'll be wearing more of those frilly things now.'

She rolls her head on the pillow to look at him.  He's glaring at the ceiling.  In profile, she can't read his expression.  'What's that mean?'

'You've peaked,' he says, and lets her go to sit up.  'Happens to every warrior, I suppose.  Maybe it is better to just admit it.'

It penetrates only hesitantly that he's being cruel on purpose.  It takes even longer to understand why.  For the life of her, she can't think of anything to say.  Her infamous temper is gone as if it's never existed.

'It was a fine experiment,' he says.  'You'll be a living legend.  Adored, courted, showered with gifts and songs and all manner of nonsense.  Who wouldn't want to enjoy that?'  He climbs over her to leave the bed, and stamps his feet into his boots, knotting his breeches.

Alanna eases up to her elbows.  'Don't say things you can't take back, Liam.'

'Four chests of gold already, did anyone tell you that?  There's an ambassador coming.  His squire's in the common room now trying to clear out all the patrons so there's room for half the Imperial Court.'

'The-- what?'

'They'll be scrambling all over themselves to get to you first.  It's Carthaki land, the Roof of the World, the Emperor's supposed to be flooding the Inland Sea to get a ship to you.  Sarain's in chaos, not that it matters, but the Marenites have heard already, you can bet on that, and--'

'Liam!  I don't care about any of that!'

His hands pause in adjusting the tuck of his shirt.  His eyes soften, just slightly.  'I hope not, kitten.'

Alanna drops backward, abruptly exhausted.  'You want an equal one minute and a lady the next and I don't even know what in between.  It's too much for one person.'

She can feel him staring at her, and maybe that stung, though she didn't mean it to.  It was just honesty, and even now, the would-be argument simmering between them, she doesn't want to fight him.  She wants to roll over and sleep for a year-- no.  She wants to get on Moonlight and ride for a new horizon, just wind in her hair, the vast open sky above her, and no-one yelling at her for reasons she doesn't fathom.

'Too much even for you, Lioness,' he says, at long last.

'I thought I was your kitten.'

'Maybe that's too much for you, too,' he says, and with that he leaves, and Alanna can't bring herself to care.

 

 

**

 

 

For the first time since she awoke after Chitral, Alanna ventures into the common room.

Though it's between mealtimes, it's quite busy.  Nearly all the tables are full.  Alanna, descending the stairwell from the upper storey rooms, hesitates in the shadow and rethinks her determination to find out what's going on.  She leans back against the wood panel and just absorbs the noise for a minute.  Coram is at the bar-- that's no shock-- but there's no familiar tankard at his side, and again she thinks he looks as though he's lost weight quickly, his clothes hanging too loose on him.  The young minstrel is strumming his instrument and humming, pausing now and then to scratch out a chord on the parchment before him.  He _is_ writing a ballad, and Alanna makes a quick vow to avoid him at all costs.  The innkeeper's wife has a table to herself, where she's polishing the silver.  There's an officious-looking fellow of middle years in discussion with the innkeeper, who keeps bowing in response to inquiries that are not quite loud enough to comprehend.  Maybe that's the ambassador's squire Liam mentioned.  His clothes are finer than anyone else's, from the sable-lined cloak wrapped elegantly over his arm to the flat cap stitched copiously with silver thread.  When he turns to survey the common room, her guess is confirmed; there's a bulky necklace of gold buckles across his doublet, and the buckle in the centre is an emblem of some kind, set with a very large ruby.

'Alanna.'

She jumps, and Thayet reaches to steady her, a little smirk on her full lips.  'Out the back,' her friend suggests, and together they duck through the kitchen and out the back to the frozen garden.  Alanna heaves a sigh of relief as the frost-tinged air breaks her unprotected skin into goosepimples.  She has just enough to feel the cold before she follows Thayet to the heated bathhouse.

'We haven't got these in Tortall,' Alanna comments, flopping onto a wobbly bench.  'Maybe I can convince Jon of the dire need.'

'Jon?' Thayet questions, checking the flame in the steam oven and then joining Alanna on her perch.  They won't be able to stay long without getting soaked; it's humid, and the sulfur-smelling waters of the pool aren't tolerable for long.

'Prince Jonathan,' Alanna corrects.  'Probably not.  Boys never care about dirt.'

Thayet chuckles.  'They don't, do they.'

This makes more words than they've exchanged in days, and Alanna turns over her choices, thinking.  She pushed it with Liam, and she's too weary after their fight to risk another.  That strange silent feeling is still in her, a bit, though it's begun to fade.  She doesn't mind just sitting in quiet with Thayet, but the part of her mind that's always niggled at problems is waking up.

Eventually, she says, 'Either we leave or this place gets swarmed, doesn't it.'

Thayet answers easily.  'I think it will be swarmed either way.  It's whether you want to be here when it happens.'

'No,' Alanna says.

'I thought so,' Thayet nods.  She pauses.  'The innkeep won't take payment.  On the other hand, you've been given quite a lot of treasure in the past few days.  That would be more than adequate for the expense of our stay.'

Alanna makes a face, and Thayet laughs again.  'Gold's heavy,' Alanna grunts.  'I didn't want to carry around that kind of weight anyway.'

'I know.'  Thayet lifts her heavy hair from her neck, wiping at the first flush of perspiration from the heat.  'I'd keep the bricks of tea, though.  And I'm rather partial to the bolt of silk cloth.  Buri has her eye on a ceremonial sabre.'

'How much is there?'

'More every day.  They've set up a room for your things.  They installed a latch, but I don't think anyone would dare rob it.  There's all sorts of rumours about Chitral's magic floating around.'

'That's rubbish,' Alanna says.  'He didn't even seem to care about me having the Jewel.  Not after I'd fought fairly for it.'

There's a longer halt then while Thayet stares at her sideways.  Alanna digs the toe of her boot over the slate tile beneath them.

'Do you want it,' Alanna asks, just before Thayet opens her mouth, and then they sit in silence again.

'No,' Thayet says, so softly Alanna almost doesn't hear it.

'I would give it to you.'

'Don't.  Please.'

It's in her pocket now.  She touches it, just to be sure, but she thinks she'd know where it was if it were buried a thousand leagues beneath the Roof of the World.

'You wouldn't do anything horrible with it,' she whispers.  'I know you well enough for that.'

'But I'd be tempted.  I'd never stop thinking that maybe they deserve it, for all they've done.  It's bad enough to know that about myself.  I never want to know if I'm capable of it.'

She takes Thayet's hand, as Liam had done with her only an hour ago.  Thayet kisses her pointer finger, and they lean into each other, shoulder to shoulder.

'If I hadn't met you, I'd be dead by now,' Thayet says then.  'It's been a privilege, Sir Alanna.'

'It's not over yet,' Alanna points out.  'Don't leave.'

'You'll be going home now.'

'It can be your home too.  You said you wanted to see Tortall.'

Thayet's laugh comes bursting out brightly.  'You don't ever stop, do you,' she says.

Alanna's grin fades before it properly starts.  She never answers, but it doesn't really matter.

 

 

**

 

 

Liam comes to her room again, that night.  He slips in and stands at the door until she bids him near.  He comes, and goes to his knees, to put his head in her lap.  It's not an apology or a submission or anything but remorse, and Alanna says nothing til he sighs and stands to strip.

Their lovemaking is tender, in a way she's never experienced with him.  He traces the line of her cheek.  He holds her as if she were breakable, instead of trying to crush her.  He runs his fingers through her hair and tucks it behind her ear and kisses her gently.

Alanna touches the Jewel at her throat, and thinks, I could love this man.  But I don't.  Not in a way either of us could live with.

They sleep tucked together, his big arm cradling her close, but they wake up facing opposite, an inch of space between their backs.

 

 

**

 

 

Alanna gives away most of the gold at random, to beggars and children and poor farmers and weary travellers escaping Sarain's chaos.  No-one comments about it, but Buri takes to carrying a pouch of it, so Alanna doesn't have to strain her healing hands digging through the saddlebags.  That's as close to approval as she imagines she'll get, but she feels lighter with each coin gone, and by the time they in Maren again she dares to think the worst is behind them.

 _When did you become an optimist?_ Faithful meows, and Alanna gives him a shove out of the cup on Moonlight's tack.  He can walk awhile.

'Through the Desert first?' Coram asks one night, when she finds him looking over his map and crouches beside him.  'The tribe'll be that glad to see ye.'

The sense-memory of the desert is so strong she finds tears in her eyes.  The smell of sun on sand.  The breeze that seems to come from everywhere and no-where.  The sweeping sheets of rain, bringing life.  The deep purple and orange of sunset.

'Don't know,' she manages, and clears the frog from her throat.  'It's not just what I want, it's what we ought to do.'

His hand falls warm on the small of her back.  'Save it for an escape, then.  When it gets to be too much in Corus.'

'You know me too well.'

'Not that well,' he shrugs, and knocks away the pebbles holding the map flat to the dirt to roll it up.  'Never figured ye'd be the recluse and Thom the social butterfly, gadding about the palace duelling and hobnobbing with sorcerers and all.'

His wry description makes her shrug awkwardly.  'Not a recluse, I think,' she says.  'I'm just... not sure I'm ready, yet.'  She shifts to sit back against the log he's using as a seat before their fire.  'I miss Corus.  I miss Thom.'

'Thom's your brother?' Buri asks, returning from the river with a pan sloshing with water and propping it on the tripod of sticks to boil.  'Does he look just like you?'

'Less now,' Coram says, turning a considering eye on her.  'When they were tots you couldn't keep 'em apart.'

'You always could,' Alanna points out.

'You could give him the Jewel,' Buri says.  'If he's such a great sorcerer.  He could conquer the world with his rod and his staff and-- I don't know what sorcerers use.'

Alanna and Coram both laugh at this, as Thayet and Liam finish brushing the horses and join them by the fire.  'Thom hates work,' Alanna explains.

'And people,' Coram adds.

'He just wants to read all day and learn things.  If he tried to rule the world he'd get bored and wander off into one of his research binges and find himself in the middle of a--'  She stops herself from the word 'coup', though Thayet smiles immediately in forgiveness.  Alanna wraps a newly unbandaged hand around the Jewel in its pouch at her neck.  'He'll like it, but just for figuring out how it works.  He did that with my emberstone.  As a matter of fact, he never did tell me anything he learnt about it.'

'Did you ask?' Liam wonders.

Alanna scrunches her nose at him, wishing not everyone felt compelled to demonstrate how well they knew her.  'No,' she admits, and the others grin.

Coram hands around the last skin of brandy-- a gift from a petty king in the last fiefdom they'd ridden through, yet another in an increasingly long list of agonising side effects of heroism-- and they each have a sip.  Alanna takes her turn, playing with the cork stopper as she played the honeyed liquid over her tongue.  She swallows.

'We should talk about how we're going to talk about it,' she says.  'I mean-- I mean we should talk about how we'll talk about the Jewel.  Back in Tortall.'

Every eye turns toward her.  'We'll say whatever you want us to say,' Liam murmurs carelessly, leaning back on his saddle.

'Or not say,' Buri corrects cannily.

Alanna is grateful for that.  'It's just that there's people who probably shouldn't know too much about it,' she tries to explain.  'Or the, the, circumstances... it's just that there's people in Corus, in the Palace, who can't be... can't be wholly trusted.'  She takes another swallow.  'Thom's not exactly one of them, but... he's connected to people who are.'

'Sir Alexander,' Coram guesses.

'Not even Thom knows for sure whose side he's on.'

'He's got a funny way of handling it,' Coram grumbled.

'Don't,' Alanna pleaded softly.  'He's still our Thom.'

'I'm sorry, I don't follow,' Thayet says.

Alanna passes on the brandy.  'You know about Duke Roger.  The Duke of Conte.  He was trying to kill the King and the Queen and Jon, Prince Jonathan, so he could have the throne.  He-- I killed him.'  It occurs to her, as she lets the words fall from her lips, that they don't pain her anymore.  With Chitral behind her, Duke Roger is just a man.  But saying his name for the first time in more than a year conjures something odder than that realisation, and for a moment she falls silent, staring at the fire.  It was just a flash, but for a moment she's certain she sees it, and it's hauntingly familiar.  A man, a jewelled rod in one hand, a torch in the other, standing before a tomb.  But it's gone as quickly as it came on, and she shakes it off with a shiver.

'Alex was his squire,' she completes her explanation.  'And after I killed the Duke he attached himself to Thom.  They've been together since, so far as I know.  It may not mean anything but that Alex has a taste for powerful men.'

Thayet and Liam are worldly enough to take that in stride.  Buri's younger and a little too candid.  Alanna sees the moment she understands what she's hearing, the quick unsmothered disgust.  She sips quickly at the brandy to hide it, but Coram catches Alanna's eyes, to warn her off a remonstration.  Alanna holds back her automatic defence of her absent brother, picking her words with care.  Liam shakes his head, and Thayet bites her lip.

'I think I was shocked when I realised too,' Alanna says finally.  'Our father was furious.  Do you remember that, Coram?  The baker's boy?'

Coram sighs.  'I remember, lass.'

'He whipped Thom himself.  Out in the stable.  It was horrible.'  She runs dry, and curls the Jewel tight.  'He didn't cry, though.  Father kept yelling that he wouldn't stop til Thom cried, but that's Thom, for you.  He's not weak.  He's not afraid.  He's just different, and he can't change it, so he doesn't bother trying.'

That man in front of the tomb.  If it means anything, Thom will know.  He always knows the important things.

'I guess I've got a little of that,' Alanna says.

Coram covers her knee.  'Ye're never not trying,' he replies, and Liam is the first to laugh, and then the others follow, even Buri, who's blushing deeply.  Even Coram grins, but he squeezes her knee and says it again, quietly.

'Yes,' Alanna agrees.  'But not trying not to be me.  Just trying to make the world all right with what I want from it.'

'Or die trying,' Liam says, dryness itself, and in that moment Alanna knows she's forgiven for the scare, forgiven for the betrayal, forgiven for Chitral and the Jewel and for being the way she is, and knows too they're over for good, but she swallows down the hurt and sheepishly acknowledges the truth in that.  Everyone laughs again.

'To Corus, then, Lioness,' Thayet says.  'We're with you.'

'With you,' Buri seconds.  Faithful looks up from washing his paw, gives Alanna a piercing look, and yowls a firm commitment.

'To the end,' Liam agrees, rubbing a knuckle over Faithful's arched back, and Coram seals it with a final squeeze to her knee.  'Now, for the sake of my poor stomach, someone not Alanna cook supper tonight.'


End file.
